Watch adorable moment, Max Whitlock’s daughter Willow wishes her good luck at the Olympics Bedford News

Reigning Olympic champion Max Whitlock was cheered on by his daughter Willow today as he negotiated the men’s gymnastics qualification process.

The five-time Olympic medalist, 28, began defending his titles in the men’s qualifying round at Ariake Gymnastics Center at the Tokyo Games.

Whitlock’s daughter Willow wished her father and the GB team the best of luck in an adorable personal video recorded by his wife Leah at their family home in Essex ahead of the qualifying rounds on Saturday July 24 morning.

The 28-year-old, who won two gold and one bronze at the last Olympic Games in Rio 2016, as well as two bronze medals in London 2012, shared the cute clip on his social media pages.

The qualifying event saw Whitlock place third in the standings with a score of 14.9, securing him a spot in the individual pommel horse final.

He placed just behind Irishman Rhys McClenaghan, whose early morning score of 15.266 led the field with another qualifying rotation to go.

McClenaghan propelled Whitlock to gold at the Commonwealth Games in 2018.

The three-time Olympian will want to defend his Olympic pommel horse title, but admitted nerves were inevitable after five years of hard work, which resulted in world titles and a few major disappointments along the way.

He said: “I can say on behalf of every gymnast that qualifying is the most difficult and scary thing of all time because everything relies on it.

“If you mess things up, your Olympics are over, and if you don’t, you can go on and have more opportunities to compete in this arena. We have all felt this.

“It was a little quieter for breakfast this morning and we felt it was competition day. But we got out here and I feel like we delivered.

“After everything we’ve been through, to come out and do what we’ve been doing, we should be really happy.”

Whitlock’s gymnastics idol Kohei Uchimura withdrew from competition after falling off the horizontal bar midway through the qualification process.

The great Japanese entered his home Olympics as the reigning two-time all-around champion and hoped to win another gold before retiring.

The 32-year-old has long been an inspiration to Whitlock, who initially hoped to emulate his success as a versatile gymnast, before focusing on excellence on his favorite apparatus.

He said: “I usually don’t watch other gymnasts but I couldn’t really fail to notice Kohei on high bar.

“It’s a real shame for him in his home country, especially because in the warm-up hall he looks amazing.

“It’s so hard to do just one piece, and I’m only starting to realize that over the years, as I’ve become a specialist myself. “

Whitlock, who also competed on high bar and parallel bars to secure the GB four-man squad, also including Joe Fraser, James Hall and Giarni Regini-Moran, qualified safely for the men’s team final .

This article originally appeared on our sister site, NationalWorld.